Tale Of Two Depressions

This is one of the great sites I’ve stumbled across that compares the Great Depression of the 30’s with the Great Depression of today. The authors have compiled a number of very interesting comparisons between the two events. Many of the conclusions drawn, suggest that the rate of decline in the current event is steeper than the former event. I would strongly recommend the read, as it provides great perspective, without the typical CNBC or Bloomberg spin.

New findings:

• World industrial production continues to track closely the 1930s fall, with no clear signs of ‘green shoots’.
• World stock markets have rebounded a bit since March, and world trade has stabilized, but these are still following paths far below the ones they followed in the Great Depression.
• There are new charts for individual nations’ industrial output. The big-4 EU nations divide north-south; today’s German and British industrial output are closely tracking their rate of fall in the 1930s, while Italy and France are doing much worse.
• The North Americans (US & Canada) continue to see their industrial output fall approximately in line with what happened in the 1929 crisis, with no clear signs of a turn around.
• Japan’s industrial output in February was 25 percentage points lower than at the equivalent stage in the Great Depression. There was however a sharp rebound in March.

Here’s the Link (click below):

• This is an update of the authors’ 6 April 2009 column comparing today’s global crisis to the Great Depression. World industrial production, trade, and stock markets are diving faster now than during 1929-30. Fortunately, the policy response to date is much better. The update shows that trade and stock markets have shown some improvement without reversing the overall conclusion –today’s crisis is at least as bad as the Great Depression.

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